Film Night: ‘Difficult Times: The Threat of Collapse’ (2022) 50 mins

This film is the second in a two-part series asking us to look more clearly into the future, so that

we can be better prepared for the threats that face us, and perhaps even turn them into an

opportunity to build a different kind of society. Whilst the first tells the story of one person's

journey into greater understanding and acceptance through a series of conversations, this one is

more atmospheric and impressionistic.

Therapist and filmmaker Denis Postle says: 'Over recent years I have researched and produced five videos in response to the climate emergency. As realism about the outcome of the silent arc of climate change and the necessity

of confronting it and its origins has emerged, each has taken me deeper into pessimism.

Recent and current perspectives focus, as it seems to me, on symptoms; sea level rise, drought,

flooding, C02 concentration and their mitigation, without either enough appreciation of the

global scale of the problem, or of deep societal dynamics, components of ‘normality’ that shape

what we call civilization, that are out of sight, taken for granted, ignored or discounted in

respect of the climate emergency.

My video essay ‘Difficult Times: The Threat of Collapse’ explores the Curse of Dominion, the use

of force to shape human and planetary life. It proposes, that through a combination of nuclear

weapons and the climate emergency, the Curse of Dominion, has begun to ensure that our

dominance may become terminal.

A poetic catalyst for embracing Now, to be felt as much as understood